Is America the greatest country on earth? Answer, only if you are rich. "Your" Congress has passed laws that allow the big banks and real estate brokers to break any law that they wish, while the people they rip off cannot challenge them (if the even the victims knew what is being done to them). If any of my U.S. readers are victims who have lost their house and job and wonder how they are going to survive on your pension or social security, come down to San Carlos, Mexico, where you can find not only houses you can afford, but also cheap medicine and denistry, beautiful beaches, and a safe environments (cops don't shoot innocent people down here).

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Subprime Mortgage Whistleblowers Warn Bigger Crash on Its Way 

Whistleblowers Richard Bowen and Michael Winston, along with UMKC's Bill Black, discuss the rampant fraud at Countrywide and Citigroup and how today's high foreclosure rates in states like Nevada could be a sign of what's to come - February 21, 2016  Subprime Mortgage Whistleblowers Warn Bigger Crash on Its Way

https://youtu.be/OO5DxgEBn8A?list=PLhvPB4lyc4dR3U93_5f1MmPbW74Jt0SX6

Bio                                                                                                                                        .

William K. Black, author of THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN ONE, teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC). He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. Black developed the concept of "control fraud" frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae's former senior management.

Richard Bowen was a former Business Chief Underwriter for Citigroup, where he monitored the credit quality of over $90 billion annually of purchased residential mortgage loans which were put into mortgage backed securities. Beginning in 2006, he repeatedly warned management about the potential losses and ultimately warned Citi's board of directors, requesting an outside investigation. Richard testified before the SEC, with his testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission being nationally televised. He story has been reported by all of the major media, and his 60 Minutes story, "Prosecuting Wall Street" has been re-aired eight times.

Michael Winston had a career of distinction in executive positions for over three decades in five Fortune 100 companies across three industries. He served as global head of leadership and organization strategy at Motorola, Merrill Lynch, McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed and Countrywide, and was hailed eight times by Leadership Excellence Journal as one of the "100 Most Influential Thinkers on Leadership in the World."
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Gretchen Morgenson of the NY Times profiled Michael Winston's courage and integrity in an article entitled, "How A Whistleblower Conquered Countrywide" and Salon Magazine's David Dayen profiled Winston's story in a piece called "Wall-Street's Greatest Enemy: The Man Who Knows Too Much."
Winston authored the recently published book World-Class Performance, endorsed by key business executives, leading academics and famed Olympians. See http://worldclassperformancebook.com/

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P.S.  If any of our readers would like to learn more about our life in San Carlos, how to get here, etc., feel free to connect to me at david_griscom@yahoo.com

Most Americans don't understand what is going on in Syria, and those who think they know believe its citizens are trying to overthrough the (supposidly) represive government headed by (the democraticlly-elected) Assad ...and that the Russians have been bombing the supposed freedom fighters. All of this is propaganda spread by the crazed Americal neoconsevatives who literally own the U.S. government and plan to dominate the rest of the world ...or die destroying it (together with all the rest of us) in a nuclear holocaust. Below, Paul Craig Roberts explains what is REALLY going on in Syria and who is actually attacking it. Hint: not Russia, who to the contrary is defending it from ISIS/ISIL/Islamist State/ Daesh plus their providers, Washington, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Read the history below to learn where things are heading now.

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The Neoconservatives Are Brewing A Wider War In Syria — Paul Craig Roberts

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February 14, 2016 | Original Here                                            Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

The Neoconservatives Are Brewing A Wider War In Syria

Paul Craig Roberts

While you are enjoying your Sunday, the insane neoconservatives who control Western foreign policy and their Turkish and Saudi Arabian vassals might be preparing the end of the world.

Any person who relies on Western media has no accurate idea of what is happening in Syria.
 
I will provide a brief summary and then send you to two detailed accounts.

The neoconservative Obama regime set-up the Syrian government headed by Assad for overthrow. A long propaganda campaign conducted in Washington’s behalf by the Western media portrayed the democratically-elected Assad as a “brutal dictator who uses chemical weapons against his own people.” Washington organized and supported a front group posing as democrats and involved them in conflict with the Syrian military.

With conflict underway, Washington began predicting that something had to be done to overthrow Assad before he used “chemical weapons against his own people.” Obama turned these predictions into a “red line.” When Assad used chemical weapons against Washington’s puppets, the US would invade Syria.

With the “red line” drawn, a false flag chemical weapons attack was staged, or an accident occurred, that Washington used to say that Assad, despite the US warning, had crossed the “red line.”

Preparations for an invasion began, but hit two roadblocks. David Cameron, Washington’s puppet prime minister of Great Britain was unable to deliver British support for the invasion as the Parliament voted it down. This left Washington uncovered and vulnerable to the charge of naked aggression, a war crime.

Russian diplomacy threw up the other road block by securing the removal of all chemical weapons from Syria.

Their invasion plan frustrated, the neoconservatives sent the jihadists they had used to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya to overthrow Assad. Initially known as ISIS, then ISIL, then the Islamist State, and now Daesh, a term that can be interpreted as an insult. Perhaps the intention of the name changes is to keep the Western public thoroughly confused about who is who and what is what.

Washington now pretends that it is fighting the Islamist State, but Washington is doing its best to frustrate the success of the Russian/Syrian alliance that is defeating the Islamist State..

Washington’s support of the Islamist State is the cause of the war in Syria. General Michael Flynn, the recently retired head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has stated publicly that it was a “willful decision” of the Obama regime to support ISIS. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/08/10/former_dia_chief_michael_flynn_says_rise_of_isis_was_willful_decision_of_us_government.html
See also: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/iraq-war-isis-michael-flynn_us_565c83a9e4b079b2818af89c

The neoconservative insistence that “Assad must go” comprises a threat to the security of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah is the Lebanese force that has twice defeated Israel’s attempt to annex southern Lebanon for its water resources. Hezbollah is dependent on Syrian and Iranian support for its arms and financing. Israel wants rid of Hezbollah.

The Islamic State that Washington is trying to create in Syria would provide Washington with a means of destabilizing Iran and Russia by exporting jihadism into those countries. The Russian Federation has Muslim populations as do former provinces of the Soviet Union that now cooperate with Russia. By bogging down Russia in internal conflicts, Washington can move Russia out of the way of Washington’s exercise of hegemony. Similarly, non-Persian populations in Iran could be radicalized by jihadism and used to destabilize Iran.

In order to protect themselves, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah have come to the support of Syria.
 
The Russians are there legally at the invitation of the Syrian government. The US is there illegally.

Russian air power in support of the Syrian Army has turned the tide against the Islamist State.

The invaders are being driven out. The neoconservatives cannot accept this defeat.

Washington is preparing a Syrian invasion by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the purpose of which is to split Syria in half with Washington controlling the eastern part with the oil fields.

Possibly this is a bluff to get Russia to accept a Syrian settlement less favorable to Russian, Iranian, and Syrian interests. However, the Russian government cannot risk that it is only a bluff. If a US/Turkish/Saudi force were to arrive first in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, Syria would be dismembered.

The Russians can get there first by dropping in paratroopers. In other words, what the insane neoconservatives are doing is giving the Russian government a big incentive to introduce Russian ground troops into the conflict. Once those troops are there, you can safely bet that the insane neoconservatives will cause conflict between them and US/Turkish forces. A wider war will have begun from which neither side can back down.

Here is a description of the race to Raqqa: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/02/the-race-to-raqqa-is-on-to-keep-its-unity-syria-must-win-.html

Here is The Saker’s take on the seriousness of the situation: http://thesaker.is/week-eighteen-of-the-russian-intervention-in-syria-a-dramatic-escalation-appears-imminent/

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Paul Craig Roberts reviews all the ways your government is "consistently acting internationally and domestically as a criminal, disregarding its own laws, international laws, the sovereignty of other countries, and the US Constitution. A worse criminal government has never existed. Yet, Americans remain subservient to the criminals that they have placed in power over themselves." And much, much more. Wake up America!

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Are Americans Too Insouciant To Survive? — Paul Craig Roberts

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February 11, 2016 | Original Here                                            Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Are Americans Too Insouciant To Survive?

Paul Craig Roberts

When one looks at the deplorable state of the world, one cannot help but wonder at the insouciance of the American people. Where are they? Do they exist or are they a myth? Have they been put to sleep by an evil demon? Are they so lost in The Matrix that they cannot get out?

Ever since Clinton’s second term the US has been consistently acting internationally and domestically as a criminal, disregarding its own laws, international laws, the sovereignty of other countries, and the US Constitution. A worse criminal government has never existed. Yet, Americans remain subservient to the criminals that they have placed in power over themselves.

According to polls, Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders are splitting the Democratic vote 50-50 as preferred Democratic presidential candidate. This is extraordinary.

Hillary Clinton represents the interests of Wall Street and the mega-banks, the Israel Lobby, and the interests of the military/security complex. These interests are totally opposed to the interests of the American people.

In his book, What’s the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank raised the question of why Amerians vote against their own interests? Why do Americans go to the voting both and do themselves in?

Whether you agree with Thomas Frank’s answer or not, Americans do, on a regular basis, harm themselves by voting for people who are agents of vested interests diametrically opposed to the interests of American citizens.

How is it possible, if Democrats are informed people, that half of them prefer Hillary Clinton? Between February 2001 and May 2015 Bill and Hilary collected $153 million in speaking fees. The fees averaged $210,795 per speech. http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/02/06/no-artful-smear-clintons-paid-153-million-speaking-fees-analysis-shows

I can remember when Bill and Hillary were in public office when their speeches were free. No one wanted to listen to them when the speeches were free. Clearly, Bill is being paid off for his past services to the powerful interest groups that control the United States, and Hillary is being paid off for her future service to the same groups.

How then is it possible that half of Democrats would prefer Hillary? Is it because she is a woman and women want a woman president more than they want their civil liberties, peace, and employment for themselves, their spouses and their children?

Or is it because, given the pressitute character of the American media, the people haven’t a clue?

If you vote for Hillary, you are voting for someone who has been paid off to the tune of $153 million by powerful vested interests who have no concern whatsoever for your interests. In addition, Hillary has the necessary campaign funds from the powerful interest groups for her presidential nomination campaign. As if this isn’t damning enough, Hugh Wharton writes that the National Democratic Committee is in league with Hillary to steal, if necessary, the nomination from Sanders and the voters. http://usuncut.com/news/the-dnc-superdelegates-just-screwed-over-bernie-sanders-and-spit-in-the-faces-of-voters/

In contrast, the interest groups who rule America are not contributing to Sanders.
Therefore, the choice of Sanders is obvious, but 50% of Democrats are too braindead to see it.

Although Hillary is a substantial threat to America, the threat of nuclear war is much greater, and the Democratic Obama regime in the hands of neoconservatives has just greatly amplified the threat of nuclear war.

The United States government, or perhaps we should say the exploiter and deceiver of the American people, has announced a three-fold increase in its military presence on Russia’s borders. The excuse for this great boost in the profits and power of the US military-security complex is “Russian aggression.”

But there is no sign of this agression. So Washington and its servile presstitutes in the Western media make it up. They prolaim a lie.

“Russia invaded Ukraine” proclaims the propaganda. No mention is made of Washington’s coup in Ukraine that overthrew a democratically elected government and began a war against the Russian populations of eastern and southern Ukraine, former provinces of Russia added to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Soviet leaders. In the presstitute media, no mention is made of Washington’s intention of seizing Russia’s only warm water port in Crimea on the Black Sea. http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/02/us-control-over-crimea-aim-of-coup-in.html 

Having created a nonexistant Russian invasion in place of the real US coup in Ukraine in the minds of the indoctrinated Americans, Washington now claims that Russia is going to invade the Baltics and Poland. Nothing could be further from the truth, but this lie from the Obama regime now determines that the US military presence on Russia’s borders will increase three-fold.

The escalation of the US/NATO threat on Russia’s borders forces a Russian response. Considering that the Russophobic governments in Poland and the Baltic States have unstable judgement, military buildups bring risks of miscalculations.

There is a limit to the level of threat that the Russian government can tolerate. The impotent Obama is in the firm grip of the neoconservatives and the military-security complex. The neoconservatives are motivated by their ideology of American world hegemony. The military-security complex is motivated by power and profit. These motives bring the United States and its vassals into conflict with Russia’s (and China’s) sovereign existence.

Within the councils of American foreign policy there is not sufficient weight to counter the neoconservative drive to war with Russia and China. In conventional war, the US is not a military match for the Russian/Chinese strategic alliance. Therefore, the war would be nuclear. The power of hydrogen bombs is immensely more powerful than the atomic bombs that the US dropped on Japan. Nuclear war means the end of life on earth.

Americans can know that democracy has failed them, because there is no check on the neoconservatives’ ability to foment war with Russia and China.

The neocons control the press, and the press portrays Russia as “an existential threat to the United States.” Once this fiction is drilled into the brains of Americans, it is child’s play for propagandists to create endless fears that deplete taxpayers of income in order to create profits for the military-security complex by relaunching the Cold War and an armaments race.

That is what is currently going on. The inability of Americans to realize that they are being taken into a conflict that benefits only the profits and power of the military-security complex and the ideology of a small group of crazies demonstrates the impotence of American democracy.

Universities and think tanks are replete with ambitious people who, chasing grants and influence, fuel the Russophobic hysteria. For example, on February 9 the Washington Post published an article by Michael Ignatieff, the Edward R. Murrow professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, and Leon Wieseltier, the Isaiah Berlin Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. The article is a complete misrepresentation of the facts in Syria and called for US measures that would result in military conflict with Russia. It was irresponsible for the Washington Post to publish the article, but the decision is consistent with the Post’s presstitute nature. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-era-of-us-abdication-on-syria-must-end/2016/02/09/55226716-ce96-11e5-88cd-753e80cd29ad_story.html

The propaganda line maintained by the US government, the neoconservatives, the military/security complex, the presstitutes, and fiction-writers such as Ignatieff and Wieseltier is that Russia is not bombing the Islamic State jihadists who are attempting to overthrow the Syrian government in order to establish a jihadish state that would threaten the Middle East, Iran, and Russia herself. The official line is that the Russians are bombing the democratic “rebels” who are trying to overthrow an alleged “brutal Syrian dictator.” The conflict that the US government started by sending ISIS to Syria to overthrow the Syrian government is blamed on the Russian and Syrian governments.

Ignatieff and Wieseltier say that the US has put its “moral standing” at risk by permitting the Russians to bomb and to starve innocent women and children, as if the US had any moral standing after destroying seven countries so far in the 21st century, producing millions of dead and displaced persons, many of whom are now overrunning Europe as refugees from Washington’s wars.

The recently retired head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Michael Flynn, has said that the Obama regime made a “willful decision” to support ISIS and use ISIS against the Assad government in Syria. That the violence in Syria originated in a US/ISIS conspiracy against Syria is ignored by Ignatieff and Wieseltier. Instead, they blame Russia despite the fact that it is Russia’s air support for the Syrian Army that has rolled back ISIS.

Where were Ignatieff and Wieseltier when Washington and its vassals destroyed Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, much of Pakistan, overthrew the first democratically elected government in Egypt, overthrew the government in Ukraine and started a war against the Russian population, and supplied Israel with the weapons and money to steal Palestine from the Palestinians? Where were they when Clinton destroyed Yugoslavia and Serbia? Where are they when ISIS murders Syrians and eats the livers of its executed victims?

It would be interesting to know who financed the professorship in Edward R. Murrow’s name and the fellowship in Isiah Berlin’s name and how these positions came to be staffed with their current occupants.

Reagan and Gorbachev brought the Cold War to an end. The George H.W. Bush administration supported the end of the Cold War and gave further guarantees to Russia. But Clinton attacked Serbia, a Russian ally and broke the agreement that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe to Russia’s border. When the neoconservatives’ plans to invade Syria and to attack Iran were frustrated by Russian diplomacy, the neocons turned on Russia with fury.

In 1961 President Eisenhower warned the American people of the threat posed by the military-security complex. That was 55 years ago. This complex is so strong today that it is able to divert massive taxpayer resources to its coffers while the living standard and economic prospects of the American people decline.

The military/security complex requires an enemy. When the Cold War ended, the “Muslim Threat” was created. This “threat” has now been superseded by the “Russian Threat,” which is much more useful in keeping Europe in line and in scaring people with prospective invasions and nuclear attacks that are far beyond the power and reach of jihadists.

Superpower America required a more dangerous enemy than a few lightly armed jihadists, so the “Russian threat” was created. To drive home the threat, Russia and her president are constantly demonized. The conclusion is unavoidable that the insouciant American people are being prepared for war.

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Dear reader: This in my estimation is the most seminal article ever by Paul Craig Roberts. Thus I've switched to large type, and I expect to rerun it from time to time on my blog to catch the attentions of people who miss it this time. The heart of this essay is that "Conspiracies are real. There are many more of them than people are aware. Many government conspiracies are heavily documented by governments themselves with the official records demonstrating the conspiracies openly available to the public." And "The charge, 'conspiracy theory,' is used to prevent investigation." PCR then adds an enormous list of distinguished scholars, and even former CIA officers, who are termed "conspiracy theorists" because they easily see through the official stories of false flag attacks created by the government to further enable the military/industrial complex to carry out such unjustified attacks in US and many countries abroad. PCR has the last word: "The neocons’ whores in the Western media who call these people 'conspiracy theorists' are so stupid and unintelligent as to be unqualified to express any opinion."

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There Is No Freedom Without Truth — Paul Craig Roberts

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February 2, 2016 | Original Here                                            Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

There Is No Freedom Without Truth

Paul Craig Roberts

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.” — President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower was a five-star general in charge of the Normandy Invasion and a popular two-term President of the United States. Today he would be called a “conspiracy theorist.”

Were Ike to be issuing his warning from the White House today, conservative Republicans like Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) would be screaming at Ike for impugning the motives of “the patriotic industry that protects our freedom.”

Neoconservatives such as William Kristol would be demanding to know why President Eisenhower was issuing warnings about our own military-industrial complex instead of warning about the threat presented by the Soviet military.

The presstitute media would be implying that Ike was going a bit senile in his old age, a tactic the presstitutes used against President Reagan as he struggled to end stagflation and the Cold War.

By January 17, 1961, when Eisenhower issued his warning in his farewell address to the American People, it was already too late. Cold Warriors had had their hooks into the American taxpayer for 15 years after the end of WW II, and the military-industrial complex had replaced “mom and apple pie” as the most venerated and entrenched US interest. The Dulles brothers ran the State Department and CIA and overthrew governments at will. (Read The Brothers http://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-Allen-Secret/dp/1250053129/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454270231&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Brothers )

The military-industrial complex had learned that regardless of the protestations of high-ranking military officers, no cost-overrun, no matter how egregious, went unpaid. Armaments industries and military bases were spread all over the country and were important considerations for every senator and many congressional districts. The chairmen of House and Senate military appropriations subcommittees and armed services committees were already dependent on campaign contributions from the military-industrial complex and for cushy jobs should they lose an election.

The Cold War was a profitable business that served many, and that is why it lasted so long.

There was never any threat of the Red Army invading Europe. Stalin declared “socialism in one country” and purged the Communist Party of the Trotskyist element that preached world revolution. An accommodation could have been reached, except that for the first time ever the military-industrial complex saw that it could keep the war business going for decades and perhaps forever.

George F. Kennan predicted that should the Soviet Union “sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean,” another adversary would have to be invented. “Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the “Soviet threat” was replaced with the “Muslim threat” and the “War on Terror” took over from the Cold War. Despite a succession of false flag attacks and warnings of a “thirty years war,” a few thousand lightly armed jihadists were an insufficient replacement for the Soviet Union and its thousands of nuclear ICBMs. It was an uncomfortable notion that the “world’s only superpower” could not dispose of a few terrorists.

So we are back to the Cold War with Russia. The propaganda is fast and furious. “Putin is the new Hitler.” “Russia invaded Ukraine.” Russia is about to invade the Baltics and Poland.” “Putin is a corrupt multi-billionaire.” “Putin is scheming to recreate the Soviet Union.” These accusations become headlines despite US military spending being a dozen or more times higher than Russian military spending and the Russian government expressing no hegemonic aspirations.

Eisenhower’s sucessor, John F. Kennedy, realized that the military-security complex was a threat, but he underestimated the threat and paid for it with his life when he stood up to the military-security complex. In stating this fact I have joined Eisenhower as a conspiracy theorist. (For a hair-raising account of the threat posed to President Kennedy by General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, read chapter three in Richard Cottrell’s book, Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe.) http://www.amazon.com/Gladio-Natos-Dagger-Heart-Europe/dp/1615776885/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454289074&sr=1-1&keywords=Gladio%3A+NATO%27s+Dagger+at+the+Heart+of+Europe

Conspiracies are real. There are many more of them than people are aware. Many government conspiracies are heavily documented by governments themselves with the official records demonstrating the conspiracies openly available to the public. Just google, for example, Operation Gladio or the Northwoods Project. These conspiracies alone are sufficient to chastise those uninformed Western peoples who go around saying, “our government would never kill its own people.”

Perhaps Russian studies provided my introduction to government conspiracies against their own people. I learned that the Tsar’s secret police set off bombs and killed people in order to blame and arrest labor agitators. I was skeptical of this account and wondered if it was a reflection of left-wing bias against Tsarist Russia. Some years later I asked my colleague, Robert Conquest, at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University if the account was true. He replied that the story is true as is known from the released secret police files that are part of the Hoover Institution’s archives.

False flag attacks are used by governments in order to pursue secret agendas that they cannot publicly acknowledge. If President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had said: “We are going to attack Iraq and a half dozen other countries in order to exercise hegemony over the Middle East, steal their oil, and clear the path for Israel to steal the entirety of the West Bank of Palestine, diverting taxpayers’ resources from serving the American people into the pockets of the armaments industries and spilling the blood of your parents, spouses, children, and siblings, even the American sheeple would have resisted.

Instead, following the famous advice of Hitler’s chief propagandist, they said: “Our country has been attacked!”

Generally speaking, an observant person with a bit of education can recognize a false flag attack. However, few people pay attention beyond what the official media says, and the media no longer investigates and questions but simply repeats the official story. Therefore, only a few realize what has really happened, and when these few open their mouths they are discredited as “conspiracy theorists.”

This method of control might be wearing thin. There have been so many false flag “terrorist attacks” in the 21st century that there are now thousands of experts labeled as “conspiracy theorist.” For example, the 9/11 Truth Movement consists of thousands of high rise architects, structural engineers, demolition experts, nano-chemists, physicists, firefighters and first responders, civilian and military pilots, and former high government officials. Collectively these experts represent far more knowledge and experience than the 9/11 Commission, which did nothing but write down whatever the government told the commission, NIST, a collection of people whose incomes and careers depend on the government, and the presstitutes who can barely manage arithemetic, much less the mathematics of controlled demolition.

The neoconservatives, who conrolled the George W. Bush regime, called for a “New Pearl Harbor” so that they could begin their wars of conquest in the Middle East. A “New Pearl Harbor” is what 9/11 gave them. Was this a coincidence or a Gulf of Tonkin or a Reichstag fire or a Tzarist secret police or Operation Gladio bomb?

The charge, “conspiracy theory,” is used to prevent investigation.

9/11 was not investigated. Indeed, as many experts have pointed out, there was a conscious effort to remove and destroy the evidence before it could be investigated. The 9/11 families had to lobby and protest for a solid year before the Bush regime consented to the totally controlled 9/11 Commission.

The Boston Marathon Bombing was not investigated. A scripted story was issued and repeated by the media. The San Bernardino shootings were not investigated. Again, a pre-scripted story took the place of investigation.

The success of false flag attacks in the US led to their use in the UK and France. The Charlie Hebdo affair was not investigated and the official explanation makes no sense. The story has been closed with all the loose ends dangling. For example, why did a French police official investigating the crime allegedly commit suicide in his police office in the early hours of the morning, and why was his family denied the autopsy report? What happened to this disappeared story? Why did the police finger a third participant in the attack as the “getaway driver” who had an iron clad alibi? If the police were so totally wrong about this member of the gang, how do we know they are right about the two men they shot to death. How come alleged perpetrators of “terrorist attacks” are always killed before they can talk? How come the only story we ever get is what the government says? How can people be so gullible after the Gulf of Tonkin, Operation Gladio, etc.?

Apparently the Charlie Hebdo attack was insufficient for the purpose, and now France has had what is called “the Paris attack,” an even more unbelievable event, evidence for which is missing. This false flag attack was too much for Kevin Barrett who assembled a collection of skeptical essays from 26 people into a book, Another French False Flag: Bloody Tracks From Paris To San Bernardino. http://www.amazon.com/ANOTHER-French-False-Flag-Bernardino/dp/0996143017/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454288973&sr=1-1&keywords=Another+French+False+Flag

Twenty-four of these contributors do not believe the official story. Does this make them “conspiracy theorists,” or does this make them brave souls who are concerned that Reichstag fire type events are replacing Western civil liberty with fascist police states?

Ask yourself, why are those trying to preserve liberty denounced?

What incentive does contributor A.K. Dewdney, Professor Emeritus at the University of Western Ontario, author of ten books about science and mathematics, have to be a conspiracy theorist?

What incentive does Philip Giraldi, former CIA case officer and Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, have to be a conspiracy theorist?

What incentive does Anthony Hall, Professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, whose latest book has been endorsed by the American Library Association as “a scholarly tour de force,” have to be a conspiracy theorist?

What incentive does Mujahid Kamran, Vice Chancellor of Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan, a Fulbright Scholar and recipient of numerous awards, have to be a conspiracy theorist?

What incentive does Stephen Lendman, syndicated columnist and host on the Progressive Radio News Hour, have to be a conspiracy theorist?

What incentive does James Petras, Bartle Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, have to be a conspiracy theorist?

What incentive does Alain Soral, one of France’s public intellectuals, have to be a conspiracy theorist?

What incentive does Robert David Steele, former CIA Clandestine Services Officer, have to be a conspiracy theorist?

The neocons’ whores in the Western media who call these people “conspiracy theorists” are so stupid and unintelligent as to be unqualified to express any opinion.

Dear Western Peoples, if you wish to be able to walk down the streets of your cities without being accosted by police, demanded to present identity papers, searched, detained indefinitely or assassinated without due process of law, if you wish to be able to express your opinion about “your” government and its use of your tax payments, if you wish to be able to discuss current affairs or your personal affairs without being recorded by the NSA or the equivalent in your own country or by both, if you wish to be able to act on your moral conscience and to protest the violence the West applies to Muslims and others unfavored by powerful Western interests, such as Palestinians, if you wish to live in the freedom that was achieved in the West after centuries of struggle, wake up, find time from less meaningful pursuits to become aware of what is being stolen from you. It is late in the game. If you do not stand up for truth, you will have no freedom as there is no freedom without truth.

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Paul Craig Roberts claims Michael Hudson to be "the best economist in the world." I have always thought the two of them equal. Now I understand the difference to be that Roberts studied classical economics and put it to work back in the days of Ronald Reagan when the US government was still 'of the people, by the people, and for the people.' In contrast, Hudson did not plan to be an economist. However, having learned from a friend "the flow of funds through the economic system and explained how crises develop when debt outgrows the economy," He later "learned more economics from his work experience than from his Ph.D. courses," i.e., going to work on Wall Street and for several of the big banks, finding "...that Western economies have been financialized in a predatory way that sacrifices the public interest to the interests of the financial sector. That is why the economy no longer works for ordinary people. Finance is no longer productive. It has become a parasite on the economy."

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The West Is Traveling The Road To Economic Ruin — Paul Craig Roberts

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Febuary 1, 2016 | Original Here                                            Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

The West Is Traveling The Road To Economic Ruin

Paul Craig Roberts

Michael Hudson is the best economist in the world. Indeed, I could almost say that he is the only economist in the world. Almost all of the rest are neoliberals, who are not economists but shills for financial interests.

If you have not heard of Michael Hudson it merely shows the power of the Matrix. Hudson should have won several Nobel prizes in economics, but he will never get one.

Hudson did not intend to be an economist. At the University of Chicago, which had a leading economics faculty, Hudson studied music and cultural history. He went to New York City to work in publishing. He thought he could set out on his own when he was assigned rights to the writings and archives of George Lukacs and Leon Trotsky, but publishing houses were not interested in the work of two Jewish Marxists who had a significant impact on the 20th century.

Friendships connected Hudson to a former economist for General Electric who taught him the flow of funds through the economic system and explained how crises develop when debt outgrows the economy. Hooked, Hudson enrolled in the economics graduate program at NYU and took a job in the financial sector calculating how savings were recycled into new mortgage loans.

Hudson learned more economics from his work experience than from his Ph.D. courses. On Wall Street he learned how bank lending inflates land prices and, thereby, interest payments to the financial sector. The more banks lend, the higher real estate prices rise, thus encouraging more bank lending. As mortgage debt service rises, more of household income and more of the rental value of real estate are paid to the financial sector. When the imbalance becomes too large, the bubble bursts. Despite its importance, the analysis of land rent and property valuation was not part of his Ph.D. studies in economics.

Hudson’s next job was with Chase Manhattan, where he used the export earnings of South American countries to calculate how much debt service the countries could afford to pay to US banks. Hudson learned that just as mortgage lenders regard the rental income from property as a flow of money that can be diverted to interest payments, international banks regard the export earnings of foreign countries as revenues that can be used to pay interest on foreign loans. Hudson learned that the goal of creditors is to capture the entire economic surplus of a country into payments of debt service.

Soon the American creditors and the IMF were lending indebted countries money with which to pay interest. This caused the countries’ foreign debts to rise at compound interest. Hudson predicted that the indebted countries would not be able to pay their debts, an unwelcome prediction that was confirmed when Mexico announced it could not pay. This crisis was resolved with “Brady bonds” named after the US Treasury Secretary, but when the 2008 US mortgage crisis hit, just as Hudson predicted, nothing was done for the American homeowners. If you are not a mega-bank, your problems are not a focus of US economic policy.

Chase Manhattan next had Hudson develop an accounting format to analyze the US oil industry balance of payments. Here Hudson learned another lesson about the difference between official statistics and reality. Using “transfer pricing,” oil companies managed to avoid paying taxes by creating the illusion of zero profits. Oil company affiliates in tax avoidance locations buy oil at low prices from producers. From these flags of convenience locations, which have no tax on profits, the oil was then sold to Western refineries at prices marked up to eliminate profits. The profits were recorded by the oil companies’ affiliates in non-tax jurisdictions. (Tax authorities have cracked down to some extent on the use of transfer pricing to escape taxation.)

Hudson’s next task was to estimate the amount of money from crime going into Switzerland’s secret banking system. In this investigation, his last for Chase, Hudson discovered that under US State Department direction Chase and other large banks had established banks in the Caribbean for the purpose of attracting money into dollar holdings from drug dealers in order to support the dollar (by raising the demand for dollars by criminals) in order to balance or offset Washington’s foreign military outflows of dollars. If dollars flowed out of the US, but demand did not rise to absorb the larger supply of dollars, the dollar’s exchange rate would fall, thus threatenting the basis of US power. By providing offshore banks in which criminals could deposit illicit dollars, the US government supported the dollar’s exchange value.

Hudson discovered that the US balance of payments deficit, a source of pressure on the value of the US dollar, was entirely military in character. The US Treasury and State Department supported the Caribbean safe haven for illegal profits in order to offset the negative impact on the US balance of payments of US military operations abroad. In other words, if criminality can be used in support of the US dollar, the US government is all for criminality.

When it came to the economics of the situation, economic theory had not a clue. Neither trade flows nor direct investments were important in determining exchange rates. What was important was “errors and omissions,” which Hudson discovered was an euphemism for the hot, liquid money of drug dealers and government officials embezzling the export earnings of their countries.

The problem for Americans is that both political parties regard the needs of the American people as a liability and as an obstacle to the profits of the military/security complex, Wall Street and the mega-banks, and Washington’s world hegemony. The government in Washington represents powerful interest groups, not American citizens. This is why the 21st century consists of an attack on the constitutional protections of citizens so that citizens can be moved out of the way of the needs of the Empire and its beneficiaries.

Hudson learned that economic theory is really a device for ripping off the untermenschen. International trade theory concludes that countries can service huge debts simply by lowering domestic wages in order to pay creditors. This is the policy currently being applied to Greece today, and it has been the basis of the IMF’s structural adjustment or austerity programs imposed on debtor countries, essentially a form of looting that turns over national resources to foreign lenders.

Hudson learned that monetary theory concerns itself only with wages and consumer prices, not with the inflation of asset prices such as real estate and stocks. He saw that economic theory serves as a cover for the polarization of the world economy between rich and poor. The promises of globalism are a myth. Even left-wing and Marxist economists think of exploitation in terms of wages and are unaware that the main instrument of exploitation is the financial system’s extraction of value into interest payments.

Economic theory’s neglect of debt as an instrument of exploitation caused Hudson to look into the history of how earlier civilizations handled the build up of debt. His research was so ground-breaking that Harvard University appointed him Research Fellow in Babylonian economic history in the Peabody Museum.

Meanwhile he continued to be sought after by financial firms. He was hired to calculate the number of years that Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico would be able to pay the extremely high interest rates on their bonds. On the basis of Hudson’s work, the Scudder Fund achieved the second highest rate of return in the world in 1990.

Hudson’s investigations into the problems of our time took him through the history of economic thought. He discovered that 18th and 19th century economists understood the disabling power of debt far better than today’s neoliberal economists who essentially neglect it in order to better cater to the interest of the financial sector.

Hudson shows that Western economies have been financialized in a predatory way that sacrifices the public interest to the interests of the financial sector. That is why the economy no longer works for ordinary people. Finance is no longer productive. It has become a parasite on the economy. Hudson tells this story in his recent book, Killing the Host (2015).
Readers often ask me how they can learn economics. My answer is to spend many hours with Hudson’s book. First, read the book through once or twice in order to get an idea of what is covered. Then study it closely section by section. When you understand the book, you will understand economics better than any Nobel prize-winning economist.

Treat this column as an introduction to the book. I will be writing more about it as current events and time permit. As far as I am concerned, many current events cannot be understood independently of Hudson’s explanation of the financialized Western economy. Indeed, as most Russian and Chinese economists are themselves trained in neoliberal economics, these two countries might follow the same downward path as the West.

If you put Hudson’s analysis of financialization together with my analysis of the adverse impact of jobs offshoring, you will understand that the present economic path of the Western world is the road to destruction.